FRAMINGHAM -- It's about 7 on a recent morning, and two dozen men are waiting
in front of a Brazilian bakery in downtown Framingham across from the town
hall.

They are hoping to be picked up. Hoping to get a day's work.

Several are reading Jornal Esporte Total, a Portuguese-language sports weekly
published in Cambridge. A few have lunches packed in plastic shopping
bags. They wear work boots and running shoes, and their clothes are
splattered with paint. Almost no one speaks any English.

Most just laugh when asked if they have any healthcare benefits.

Milton Martins, 52, takes a sip from a coffee cup and says he would like
to work today in landscaping or painting.

He has come to the country from Brazil on a tourist visa that will soon
expire, but he plans to stay for about two years to save enough money for
his three children's education.

"It's so hard to be here," Martins says through an interpreter. "I
miss my family and friends all the time."

It is a scene that is being repeated around the country: immigrants who have
few other options looking for someone to give them some decent work.
And both immigration advocates and critics say it is a sign of an
immigration system that's broken.

There are hundreds of spots like the bakery in Framingham nationwide,
according to a study from the University of California at Los Angeles,
"In Pursuit of the American Dream: Day Labor in the Greater Washington D.C.
Region." The report, released in June, was based on interviews with
476 day laborers. The researchers have interviewed day laborers in 143
cities and plan to publish more of their findings in coming months.

In the Washington area, the report found day laborers reporting a long list
of work-related problems: being denied food or breaks, a lack of safety
training, and difficulty getting paid. In fact, 58 percent said that
at least once they had either not been paid or had received bad checks from
employers.

Several of the men interviewed in front of the bakery -- all of whom said
they were originally from Brazil -- said they had been denied wages they had
earned. Some pointed to their own countrymen as the worst culprits.

Jose Teixeira, 50, who had stopped by to chat with friends, said he quit
working for Brazilians after he had problems getting paid. "The
Brazilians here are the enemy of the Brazilians because they want cheap
labor," he said. "It's not good to come here anymore."

In Framingham five years, he has been working as a truck driver for the last
three, and he hopes to make enough to help support the small cattle farm
his family runs in Brazil.

The state has seen a wave of immigration from Brazil in recent years,
with Framingham a major magnet for the new arrivals. Although no one
knows how many Brazilians are in the state illegally, the Allston-basedz
Brazilian Immigrant Center recently estimated that about 160,000 undocumented
Brazilians live in the state.

"The reason people are out there on the corner is either they have a visa
that doesn't allow them to work legally or they're undocumented," he said.

He wants the immigration system reformed "so people are not putting themselves
out there to be exploited."

"Is the realistic solution to find, detain, and deport every illegal immigrant
in the country, or do we allow people to emerge from underground and become
tax-paying community residents, where they are able to find that American
dream?" he said. "The realistic solution is allowing people to earn
the privilege of getting in line for citizenship."

Noorani and other immigrant advocates support a bill filed recently by
senators Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, and John McCain,
Republican of Arizona. It would let many undocumented workers take
regular jobs, allow them to eventually apply for permanent legal residency,
provide more English language instruction, and step up border enforcement.

Critics of illegal immigration also see a problem with the day labor
phenomenon, but they offer a different solution.

Jack Martin, special project director for the Washington-based Federation
for American Immigration Reform, said the government should focus on denying
jobs to people who are here illegally.

He agreed with Noorani that it isn't practical to immediately track down
and deport all undocumented workers. But he said workers wouldn't
keep crossing the borders, if they couldn't find work.

"Don't build it, and they won't come," he said.

Martin pointed to a federal law that makes it illegal for an employer to
knowingly hire an undocumented immigrant. He said the government hasn't
been tough enough in enforcing that law.

Employers may feel like they have to hire these workers to stay competitive,
he said, but Congress should level the playing field for everyone by
consistently enforcing the law.

What about the argument from some businesspeople that illegal immigrants are
the backbone of our economy, doing work no one else wants to do?

They are stealing jobs, said Martin. He acknowledged that wages and
prices for services such as landscaping would go up if only citizens could
take the jobs, but he said that's the way it should be.

"The South thought it was essential they have slavery in order to maintain
their standard of living, but that was antithetical to principles of
our country, and we ended slavery," said Martin. "And the concept that
we have to have large numbers of exploited foreign workers in order to
maintain the standard of living of some people is antithetical to our
fundamental values."

One local landscaper has found a way around the dilemma. Roger Sturgis,
who owns a Framingham landscaping company, hires legal workers from Jamaica
through a government-sponsored visa program.

But the route he's chosen is not easy, he said. The program was cut
back last year so he never got fully staffed. This year, the program
was restored. But there wouldn't be enough workers to go around if
all the landscaping businesses in the area suddenly sought legal workers,
he said.

Sturgis estimated that 90 percent of his competitors use illegal workers.
"They're frustrated," he said. "They would rather hire legal, documented
people, but they can't find them."

A handful of Framingham residents have complained about the bakery being used
as an informal hiring site, but it hasn't been a huge source of conflict
in town as it has elsewhere in the country.

John Steacie, a Town Meeting member from Precinct 13, near downtown, said
he's not too concerned about it, but he wondered if trucks stopping at
the bakery might be a traffic problem.

"It would be nice if they were out back in the parking lot waiting to get
picked up, because they are kind of in the way sometimes," he said, adding he
hasn't really heard anyone complaining about it. "I guess they have
a right to be on the sidewalk."

Most of the men in front of the bakery said they were in the country
illegally. Many wouldn't give their names. They spoke of living
in tight quarters in Framingham with several other Brazilian men, of leaving
behind wives and children. And they said they were worried that
work is drying up.

A couple said they are having problems with their "coyotes." The
coyotes helped them sneak over the Mexican border and are still demanding
thousands of dollars in fees from them as a fee.

The American system has spawned the coyotes, who lure workers to the United
States, advertising easy money from jobs that don't always materialize.

"Most of the people who are here," said Gilberto Zanolli Parana, who was
among the waiting men, "if they didn't have the debt with the coyotes,
they would go home today."

Globe correspondent Eduardo A. de Oliveira contributed to this report.